Microelectronic assemblies generally include one or more ICs, such as for example one or more packaged dies (“chips”) or one or more dies. One or more of such ICs may be mounted on a circuit platform, such as a wafer such as in wafer-level-packaging (“WLP”), printed board (“PB”), a printed wiring board (“PWB”), a printed circuit board (“PCB”), a printed wiring assembly (“PWA”), a printed circuit assembly (“PCA”), a package substrate, an interposer, or a chip carrier. Additionally, one IC may be mounted on another IC. An interposer may be an IC, and an interposer may be a passive or an active IC, where the latter includes one or more active devices, such as transistors for example, and the former does not include any active device. Furthermore, an interposer may be formed like a PWB, namely without any circuit elements, such as passive devices including inductors, capacitors and resistors, or active devices. Additionally, an interposer includes at least one through-substrate-via.
An IC may include conductive elements, such as pathways, traces, tracks, vias, contacts, pads such as contact pads and bond pads, plugs, nodes, or terminals for example, that may be used for making electrical interconnections with a circuit platform. These arrangements may facilitate electrical connections used to provide functionality of ICs. An IC may be coupled to a circuit platform by bonding, such as bonding traces or terminals, for example, of such circuit platform to bond pads or exposed ends of pins or posts or the like of an IC. Additionally, a redistribution layer (“RDL”) may be part of an IC to facilitate a flip-chip configuration, a die stacking configuration, or a more convenient or accessible position of bond pads for example.
Conventionally, an image sensor device, such as for a digital camera, is coupled to a separate controller chip (“controller”), such as to control sensor sensing time (exposure time), thresholds, and/or other features. An image sensor device may further be coupled to a separate driver chip and a separate image processor chip, as is known. Such controller may further be coupled to a motor for adjusting focus and/or electronic aperture, among other camera components. Distance between an image sensor device and a separate chip coupled thereto, such as a controller or image sensor for example, of a camera causes an amount of signal propagation delay. This delay can negatively impact performance of a camera.
Accordingly, it would be desirable and useful to provide a camera with less propagation time between an image sensor device and a separate chip coupled thereto.